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Mountaineater - live review

Mountaineater

Mountaineater at Bacco Room, Auckland
June 27 2009

Reviewed by: UTR

Opening the night was new Auckland 3 piece Lord Of Tigers, co-fronted with Milon from Cobra Chan and Sommerset and Ryan from Sommerset, it's a mutha fucken assault on surging heavy riffs and barraging rolling metal, the crowed was literally blown away.

The Bacco Room has a rep for being loud and tonight would be a test for the patrons.

The man behind one of NZs largest and most recognized sonic bands HDU, or High Dependency Unit, brought his new take on music to Auckland with Mountaineater. A name that lives up to every visual aspect it conjures up.

Where Mountaineater differs from the more inverted HDU is that it seems designed for more human interaction. There’s more constant builds and dives and solid hammering rhythms.

Tristan's guitar playing, one of the kings of sonic delay and guitar bending swirls, proved again why he is so revered. His full control on the more rock sound (and I use that in the best term), can only be described as brutal. Sometimes a punchy, almost Shellac sounding drive, and at others mind blowing time-signature 7/8s that had most of the bearded crowed having a quick chin rub.

Tristan writhed about on stage, fully consumed buy the songs as they passed, his vocals naturally suited for this more confrontational music and with new additions Chris Livingston (drums) and Anaru Ngata (bass and guitar), this pressure cooker of a band are a breath of fresh air on a sometimes dispassionate live music scene.

Best gig of the year.

comments

Total: 3

Yeah not quite gig of the year, but this was a very good show. Very curious to see how this band develops.

Oh it did certainly take the cake for loudest show of the year...closely rivaled by Lord Of Tigers at Whammy a week before...

Posted by Fler 2 years ago

Yeah, I'm not convinced it was gig of the year, for a couple of reasons...one, Spiritualized played here this year, and so did Neil Young and also those Trail of Dead chaps.

Tell you what though, the forthcoming show in Napier looks pretty darn special for noise fans - Mountaineater, Kerretta and Despot (which is Maurice from Jakob wearing cast-iron trousers...I think..something about metal anyway)

Posted by Firewarden 2 years ago

Gig of the year? That may be stretching things a wee bit. I actually found this performance a muddied affair compared to the sonic purity of Tristan's previous solo outings as Mountaineater where he relied on multi tracked, layered guitar alone. Funny how the addition of a couple of extra members immediately draws it all closer to the two dimesionality of conventional 'music'. I look forward to seeing them play over the next few years and watching them -hopefully- meld a little more.

Posted by hugh 2 years ago